Birthmarked

She hid her surprise. It would be simple to show him the pattern on her own ankle, but he apparently he didn't know about it, which could only mean Leon hadn't told him. Gaia took the pencil in her cold, clumsy fingers, and forced them to grasp it. Aware that the guard behind her was also watching, she carefully drew the familiar pattern:

"That's it?" Mabrother Iris sounded surprised. He spun the paper toward himself. "So simple," he added in a different voice, as if that made sense to him. "What does it mean?" he asked.

Gaia shrugged a shoulder. "I don't now. It's like part of a square."

Mabrother Iris was still looking at the paper, or she was sure he would have known she was lying. She thought the hint of the Orion constellation was a connection to her mother s maiden name, Orion, but if he didn't recognize the pattern, she wasn't going to fill him in.

"So every baby your mother advanced to the Enclave, every baby from Western Sector Three, has these freckles," Mabrother Iris said. "These same freckles?"

"Yes. She sometimes helped deliver babies in other sectors if she was needed, but they would be comparatively few."

"But those babies, too, would be in your mothers code," Mabrother Iris said.

Gaia couldn't be certain. "I expect so," she said. "I don't know." It made her feel acutely uncomfortable, cooperating with him. Honesty, even partial honesty, had never felt so wrong to her. Her gaze shifted longingly toward the windows. The fog had lifted now, and she could see sunlight on the pale stone of the obelisk.

"What makes you think the ribbon code is about the quota babies?" she asked.

"Come. Look at this," Mabrother Iris said. He was standing beside the screen desk again, and he guided Gaia closer. On the top layer was an image of her mother's ribbon, but now it was increased in size so that a section of it was wider than her hand, the silk markings easy to see.

She gripped the pencil tight in her fingers, willing the little lines to resolve themselves into a pattern she could identify, but the symbols looked more like doodles than any letters she'd ever known. She sensed that Mabrother Iris was watching her face closely, and she tried to concentrate. Her effort only made her more confused and anxious.

Beside her, the man sighed.

"I'm sorry," she said quietly. "I'm trying."

"There's no question that we'll eventually decipher it," he said. "We can see that it's a record of births." He pointed to one group of symbols. "These, clearly, are numbers. They repeat, with variations." He pointed to another group, and then another, but she couldn't see how any of them were related. "The other figures are the names of the parents. Combined with the Nursery's birth date records from when the advanced babies first arrived inside the wall, we can figure out the birth parents of our children from outside the wall. At least from Western Sector Three. So far, your mother is the only midwife we can find who kept records."

"Have you asked the others?"

"Obviously."

Gaia wondered if her mother had heard about these investigations, and if that was why she had given her ribbon to Old Meg a few weeks before she was arrested. Gaia frowned, and Mabrother Iris tilted his face, watching her.

"You have another question?" he asked dryly.

"Why didn't you keep track of the birth parents before?" she asked. It seemed an obvious thing to do.

He lifted an eyebrow, leaning back slightly. "Why, indeed. There was a misguided idea of equality and fairness-- all babies from outside the wall were equally worthy, so there was no need to track their heritage, theoretically. They were true members of their Enclave families, with all the rights of blood. No ties to the outside. That was the principle decades ago, when the Enclave first rescued babies from abusive parents on the out' side. Furthermore, the anonymity was supposed to elevate everyone's sense of responsibility: there was a community obligation to raise all the children, to create an Enclave that was best for everyone. Absurd, of course. Parenting doesn't work on a massive scale. By its very nature, it's individualistic. Yet even the Protectorat's family believed in the anonymity once."

Gaia thought of Leon, adopted by the Protectorat and his first wife. No one knew who his biological parents were.

"There were practical reasons, as well," Mabrother Iris continued. "Some of the more shortsighted parents outside the wall objected to advancing their children. They wanted to trace the adoptions and reclaim their offspring. In one case, a grandfather actually broke into the wall and tried to take a two year old he thought was his grandson. The parents inside the wall wanted to be sure that could never happen, and so we had to promise there were no records. No records connecting specific babies to specific birth parents outside."

Mabrother Iris faced her directly, and his gaze grew somber.

"Your mother's code-- or your father's, I should say-- is vitally important now."

She couldn't hide her frustrated confusion. "I still don't see why," she said. "What good does it do to know who the parents are? If you just care about the genes, wouldn't it be simpler and more precise to test each person's DNA?"

He looked at her curiously. Then he ran a finger along the edge of the picture desk, frowning in thought. "You're turning out to be quite an interesting mix of ignorance and information," he said, with an odd note in his voice. "Do you know what DNA is, exactly?"

She hedged, trying to recall what her mother and father had taught her, back in the evenings when they had walked together by the unlake. "I know it's a person's genetic code, and each person's code is unique, like a fingerprint."

Mabrother Iris frowned. "True, for a start. We've taken the DNA of many families within the wall. People we're worried about. Now we're linking traits for health problems with the genes. Some of the simpler ones, like recessive hemophilia, we've known about for a long time. Others, like infertility, are far more complicated."

"So can't you just take the DNA of all the people outside the wall, too?" she asked. "That wouldn't be too invasive, would it? Can't you tell, then, how people are related?"

He shook his head. "That would be like adding more hay to the haystack when we're looking for one needle. The DNA alone without the family relationships is far less valuable when we want to identify a specific, significant gene. But that's beside the point. From you, we need to know the birth parents of the advanced babies from Western Sector Three," he said. "That's our top priority. Your code is the key to that in-formation."

"But-- " Gaia was still confused.

"Trust me," he said ironically, nudging his glasses. "Do your bit. Decipher the code." He pushed a button, and a long piece of paper began to roll out of a side slot of the picture desk, then another. He pulled them out and handed them to her. "This is the first half of one side, enlarged. If you find you need more, let me know."

Gaia took the enlarged copy of the ribbon; every silk thread was clearly visible and impenetrably obscure. Mabrother Iris made a gesture toward Sgt. Bartlett, who started forward.

"You've undoubtedly asked my mother to do this same thing," she said. "Why do you think I can solve it when my mother can 't?"

His smile didn't reach his eyes. "Because you re smarter." He took off his glasses and polished the lenses with his hand' kerchief, and when he looked up, his strange, dilated eyes seemed to look right through her. "You have twenty-four hours to prove you can help us on this. It's not a game."

Chapter 17 The Baby Code

Sgt. BARTLETT ESCORTED Gaia to a small, clean room with pale yellow walls and a large window. A wooden desk and chair lined one wall, and a simple cot, made up with sheets, pale gray blankets, and a pillow, lined the other. A nap row door led to a compact bathroom, and Gaia could see folded white towels on a shelf beside the sink. A clean gray dress hung on a hook over a pair of tidy black shoes.

She stepped to the window, which also overlooked the square, but from even higher up. It was open a hand's width at the bottom and rigged to open no further. She could see the white roofs of the prison and other buildings, and in one yard, a quiet place where the sun didn't touch yet, a woman in red was hanging laundry on a line. What she wouldn't give to trade places with that woman right now.

Sgt. Bartlett cleared his throat from the doorway, and she turned sharply. She hadn't even realized he was still there.

"The clean clothes are for you after your shower. Do you need anything else?" he asked.

She searched his brown eyes, and for the first time, she saw a yielding in them. He was young, too, she realized. Maybe a bit older than Leon. His lips were fuller, with more color, and his features were even and tanned. He was taller than Leon and broader through the shoulders. Where Leon was pale, grave, and intense, Sgt. Bartlett had a confident, natural insouciance, despite his serious work.

"Does Leon know I'm here?" she asked.

His eyes flickered before his expression became politely neutral again. 'I'll inform him."

"May I have something to eat?" she asked. "Some water?"

"Of course," he said.

She slumped into the chair. At least they didn't mean to starve her. In her fingers, she clutched the printout Mabrother Iris had given her. She'd never been much of a reader-- there had been few books outside the wall-- and the task of deciphering the code seemed insurmountable.

"I need something to write with," she said. "And clean paper."

"They're in the drawer," Sgt. Bartlett said, gesturing toward the desk.

"Ah," she said. She glanced up again at the blond guard, and it seemed to her that he was lingering needlessly. His fingers clenched against the side of his leg, causing the fabric to twitch suddenly. The mannerism struck her as familiar, though she couldn't see why it should.

"Is there something else?" she asked finally.

She saw him hesitate, and then he stepped fully into the room and closed the door behind him.

"Is it true the freckles mean a person was born in Western Sector Three?" he asked.

Startled, Gaia tried to remember precisely where she'd been in her conversation with Mabrother Iris when Sgt. Bartlett entered the room. He had untied her just before she drew the freckle pattern, she recalled. She nodded slowly. "Yes."

He closed his eyes briefly, and Gaia knew it was more than simply an idle question.

"If I have the freckles-- I'm not saying I do-- but if I do, I'd want to know who my parents are," he said now, his voice urgent. "If you could help me, I'd be grateful."

She half expected him to pull up his trouser leg and take off his boot right then to check for the freckles. "I don't know the code," she said helplessly.

He looked confused, disappointed. "But you must know something," he said. "Didn't your father tell you anything?"

She stepped to the desk and smoothed the papers on its surface, inspecting the first line closely:

[Symbols Removed]

The symbols didn't look like any alphabet she'd ever seen. She rubbed her forehead, fighting back the despair and fear.

"Think," Sgt. Bartlett said gently. "Think of everything your father ever taught you. It must be there in your mind some' how. Was he an educated man? Did he speak other languages?"

"He was just a tailor," she answered.

Her father had been an autodidactic tailor who had never needed a pattern for cutting out material. He'd been able to visualize in his mind how every scrap of fabric would need to be cut, even for the most complex garment, and he never made a mistake. But also, he'd loved games and tricks and codes and patterns. She remembered again the way he sang the alphabet song backward. He'd played the banjo for hours, inventing his own tunes.